Wednesday, February 21, 2007
"All of a sudden, I felt a tremendous wave of fear for no reason at all. My heart was pounding, my chest hurt, and it was getting harder to breathe. I thought I was going to die.""I'm so afraid. Every time I start to go out, I get that awful feeling in the pit of my stomach and I'm terrified that another panic attack is coming."
As described above, the symptoms of a panic attack appear suddenly, without any apparent cause. They may include:
Racing or pounding heartbeat
Chest pains
Dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea
Difficulty breathing
Tingling or numbness in the hands
Flushes or chills
Dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions
Terror - a sense that something unimaginably horrible is about to occur and one is powerless to prevent it
Fear of losing control and doing something embarrassing
Fear of dying
A panic attack typically lasts for several minutes and is one of the most distressing conditions that a person can experience. Most who have one attack will have others. When someone has repeated attacks, or feels severe anxiety about having another attack, he or she is said to have panic disorder.
According to one theory of panic disorder, the body's normal "alarm system," the set of mental and physical mechanisms that allows a person to respond to a threat, tends to be triggered unnecessarily, when there is no danger. Scientists don't know exactly why this happens, or why some people are more susceptible to the problem than others. Panic disorder has been found to run in families, and this may mean that inheritance (genes) plays a strong role in determining who will get it. However, many people who have no family history of the disorder develop it. Often, the first attacks are triggered by physical illnesses, a major life stress, or perhaps medications that increase activity in the part of the brain involved in fear reactions.
I need help.
stop the time
the ticking of the clock
my heart is pounding
fast
and it hurts
kill me